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Construction flaws and deviations found in tornado-damaged school, officials say

This photo shows where an exterior wall that may have been poorly attached fell down at Donald T. Shields Elementary in Glenn Heights. The company that built the school said high winds during the recent tornadoes caused the damage.
(
Jae S. Lee
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Staff Photographer
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Storm damage to Donald T. Shields Elementary school, (part of Red Oak ISD), shown Dec. 28 in Glenn Heights after tornadoes tore across North Texas two days earlier. Timothy P. Marshall (not pictured) is a consultant who focuses on wind damage and construction defect evaluations, among other things. He is participating in a damage survey team with the National Weather Service. As he surveyed the damage at Donald T. Shields Elementary in Glenn Heights, he posted this to his Facebook account: “one of several walls that fell outward at this school. Walls were not attached to the steel frame and only had small nails to secure them into the concrete foundation. Thus, walls were in essence free-standing.”
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Photo submitted by TIMOTHY MARSHALL
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Storm damages of Donald T. Shields Elementary School are seen from Lake Ridge Drive in Red Oak.
(
Jae S. Lee
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Staff Photographer
)
This photo shows where an exterior wall that may have been poorly attached fell down at Donald T. Shields Elementary in Glenn Heights. The company that built the school said high winds during the recent tornadoes caused the damage.
(
Jae S. Lee
-
Staff Photographer
)

A Glenn Heights elementary school damaged during last month’s tornadoes suffered from construction flaws that may explain why some of its exterior walls fell over, school officials said Thursday.

Officials blamed the construction company, Ratcliff Constructors, for straying from design specifications during the 2008-2009 construction of Donald T. Shields Elementary school. Engineers hired by the school district found problems with the fasteners used to attach the brick-veneer walls to the rest of the building .

“These deviations from the specified plans are unacceptable,” Scott Niven, superintendent of Red Oak Independent School District, said in a statement. “The district will do whatever is necessary to address these issues” during rebuilding, he said, adding “The responsible parties will be held accountable.”

Ratcliff did not respond to messages The Dallas Morning News left with officials including its president, Max Young. In a statement several weeks ago, he said his company strongly disagreed with allegations of faulty construction and firmly believes the school "was constructed in accordance with the plans and specifications."

Ratcliff has built at least eight new elementary and middle schools for the Dallas Independent School District in recent years. Such work is reviewed by many layers of officials including outside professionals, a spokesman for the district said Friday, adding that it is "not considering any additional steps at this time."

Glenn Heights school officials began looking into the school’s construction after it drew criticism from an engineer assessing damage from the Dec. 26 tornadoes. The engineer, Timothy Marshall, was volunteering as part of a survey team created by the Fort Worth office of the National Weather Service.

The school largely survived the twister. But some of its brick exterior walls fell away, exposing the building’s interior to the storm and raising concerns about what would have happened if there had been children inside.

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Marshall said the walls that fell had not been fastened securely to the school’s steel structure.

After the Morning News reported Marshall’s criticism, the school district hired an engineering firm, Lavi & Associates, to assess the walls’ design and construction. The firm’s Jan. 11report concluded that the walls’ design was sound.

“However, installation of exterior non-load bearing walls were not consistent with the engineered shop drawings,” the report said. Among other problems, fasteners securing the walls were not installed according to manufacturer’s guidelines, the report said, which “in combination with tornado wind loads, contributed to failure of these walls.”

With that report in hand, district officials began investigating other walls at the elementary school. Engineers cut holes in the walls in a dozen places around the building to inspect the fasteners underneath; none that they checked had been installed properly, according to a subsequent report by Lavi & Associates.

In an interview Thursday, the school superintendent said that Ratcliff declined to attend a Jan. 19 meeting with school officials to discuss the next steps.

“Where Ratcliff goes from here, I’m not sure,” Niven said, adding that he hoped the company would try to help solve the problem.

A different construction firm has been hired to rebuild the school, he said.

Ratcliff won the contract to build the school in January 2008 and completed the work in July 2009, officials say. It hired a subcontractor, Walker Drywall, to install the exterior walls. An official of that company told The News that it installed the walls according to the engineered plans, but declined further comment.

To ensure that the school’s construction complied with building codes, the district hired an inspection firm, Bureau Veritas, to inspect the work. Small cities often require this in lieu of having their own inspectors.

The school district relied on the firm “to perform adequate inspections,” Niven said. “Obviously they didn’t.”

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Bureau Veritas officials did not immediately respond to messages from the News. Niven said the district can't get the company to return its calls.

An engineering firm involved in designing the walls said the force of the storm may have played a major role in their failure, according to a report released by the school district.

Building codes in North Texas generally require structures to withstand 90 mph winds. While the tornado that struck Glenn Heights may have had winds as high as 155 mph in some areas, the National Weather Service says the tornado at the school's location was probably an EF0 or an EF1, which would mean winds as low as 65 mph or as high as 110 mph.

The tornado that struck the school dislodged several dozen air conditioning units from its roof. The tumbling units may have contributed to the walls’ failure, the school district’s engineers say.